Noble to lead 2010 Shakespeare Fest

Director will replace Old Globe's Tresnjak

The Old Globe Theatre has hired the distinguished British director Adrian Noble to lead its 2010 Summer Shakespeare Festival, taking the place of Darko Tresnjak, who is leaving the theater.

Noble, who was artistic director of England's renowned Royal Shakespeare Company for nearly 13 years, will initially be on a one-year contract to direct the festival, whose 2010 edition coincides with the Globe's 75th anniversary.

Tresnjak, who has directed 14 productions at the Globe since 2002, was tapped six years ago to revive the theater's tradition of staging classical works in summer repertory. In addition to serving as artistic director of the Shakespeare fest, he has held the title of resident artistic director since last year.

Tresnjak will depart the Globe in September to focus on independent directing projects, said Louis G. Spisto, the theater's CEO and executive producer.

Spisto declined to say whether the theater plans to fill the position of resident artistic director. As executive producer, Spisto will continue to be responsible for the bulk of the Globe's programming, as he has been for the past several years.

Spisto said Noble was the Globe's first choice to take over the Shakespeare festival.

“He's a master of classical theater,” said Spisto. “(He has) a very straightforward, no-nonsense approach that delivers the text and is always fresh without being gimmicky.

“I'd seen his 'Macbeth' at the Met, which was spectacular,” Spisto said of Noble's 2007 adaptation of the Shakespeare-derived Verdi work for the Metropolitan Opera. “But last season's 'Hamlet' at Stratford (the top-tier Shakespeare festival in Ontario, Canada) was tremendous. My colleagues at Stratford said he's hard to get, but he's great when you get him.”

Noble, who is 58, led the Royal Shakespeare Company, based in Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, from 1991 to 2003.

He has earned some 120 Olivier Award nominations (the top British theater prize), and while he's best-known for his classical work, he has shown great range over the years, directing works from opera to American musicals (“Kiss Me Kate”) to the hit 2002 movie-based show “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in London's West End.

The British newspaper The Independent once called Noble “perhaps the most ambitious artistic director in the history of the RSC,” a company whose roots go back 130 years (it took its present name in 1961).

Noble, speaking by phone from his home in England, joked that the closest he's ever come to San Diego is the Los Angeles airport. But he called his hiring “one of those extraordinarily fortunate coincidences. Serendipity, I think, is the right word.”

Last year's “Hamlet” renewed Noble's enthusiasm for Shakespeare after a deliberate five-year break from the Bard. So Spisto's call, he explains, “was kind of perfect timing, because my juices were absolutely running for Shakespeare. And the Old Globe's got a very high reputation in the Shakespeare world.”

Noble, who will make his first visit to San Diego next month, said he's pondering a production of “King Lear” as the centerpiece of the 2010 festival, but is far from making any definite decisions yet.